THE
Taliban has written to Malala Yousafzai, the teen activist shot by militants,
accusing her of "smearing" them and urging her to return home.
Gunmen from the
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) shot Malala, now 16, in the head in her home
town in Swat, in the country's northwest, where she campaigned for the right of
girls to go to school, last October.
Malala made a powerful
speech to the UN on Friday in her first public appearance since the attack
which almost killed her, vowing to continue her struggle for education and not
be silenced by the militants.
In an open letter
released on Wednesday, Adnan Rasheed, a former air force member turned TTP
cadre, said he personally wished the attack had not happened, but accused her
of running a "smearing campaign" against the militants.
"It is amazing that
you are shouting for education, you and the UNO (UN) is pretending that you
were shot due to education, although this is not the reason ... not the
education but your propaganda was the issue," Rasheed wrote.
"What you are doing
now, you are using your tongue on the behest of the others."
The letter, written in
English, was sent to reporters in northwest Pakistan and its authenticity
confirmed to AFP by a senior Taliban cadre who is a close associate of Rasheed.
He accused Malala of
seeking to promote an education system begun by the British colonialists to
produce "Asians in blood but English in taste" and said students
should study Islam and not what it called the "satanic or secular
curriculum".
"I advise you to
come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture, join any female Islamic
madrassa near your home town, study and learn the book of Allah, use your pen
for Islam and plight of Muslim ummah (community)," Rasheed wrote.
He said he had
originally wanted to write to Malala to warn her against criticising the
Taliban when she rose to prominence with a blog for the BBC Urdu service
chronicling life under the militants' 2007-9 rule in Swat.
Rasheed was sentenced to
death over a 2003 attack on Pakistan's then military ruler General Pervez
Musharraf but escaped from custody in a mass jailbreak in April last year
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